A Tiny Roadside Village, Made From Quartz

In 1968, Henry L. Warren decided to do something special. He started building a tiny village on the side of the road, using white flint rock, concrete, and red brick. He called it “Shangri-La.”

“Wow,” said Scotty, jumping out of the Dart. “Look at all this quartz!” It was amazing. Warren had mined the rock himself using dynamite on his land, and built the town next to his own home on old highway NC86, forty minutes or so from Chapel Hill.

The detail is just remarkable. Each brick has a block of quartz shoved inside. Each building has character and purpose. As a true obsessive, he even gave each a name. There’s the Dew Drop Inn, the Shangri Hi School, and the Little Brown Church in the Dell. The White Rock Motel has it’s own tiny swimming pool. There’s a jailhouse, and a hospital too.

“Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man,” said Warren once. I like that.